The myth of the prolific striker being crucial to success...

Windypants said:
Peterborough have Toney's goals and aren't 'flying'. They're doing no better than us. They've got Maddison, as well!
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Without his goals they’d be well down the league.
Tbh the original post is once of the most nonsensical I’ve seen on here.
 


SandDancer said:
The reason why we are 5/6 place is because our main striker is:
Sunderland: Wyke, 4 goals, 1 assist
Maguire and Gooch do not play as striker
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Don't blame Wyke for our position, you've got it upside down.

In the period of the season when our form was poorest, and we dropped most points, between PP arriving and early December, when we dropped most points, he wasn't even in the team! Full madone :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

If anything credit Wyke as being an important part of our revival.
 
I can get the opinion that we don't necessarily need a 20 goal a season striker because of the way we play. We need someone who contributes more than Wyke though, both in terms of goals and overall contribution.

Yes, he works hard and has to be given credit for that. His overall quality and contribution is way below what we need though. People say that his link up play is good, I can't agree with that. When he is involved he tends to keep it as simple as possible with short passes (often straight back to the player who passed the ball to him) and there's an total absence of genuine hold up play and bringing others into play.

We played really well first half on Tuesday night and his main contribution was running around and chasing their centre backs. His involvement in the good football we played was non-existent. I think that says a lot.
 
Ilios said:
David Connolly scored 13 goals in our title winning season, and was our top scorer. Maguire has 10 already and Gooch has 9, they'll both outscore him this season.
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True, you can certainly go up without a great goal scorer but in order to do so the rest of the team have to regularly contribute. The problem though is that after Gooch and Maguire very few players chip in with goals.

Under Keane we also had several contributing - Murphy (10), Leadbitter (7), Elliott (5), Edwards (5), Yorke (5), Whitehead (4), Wallace (6) and Hysen (4).

Two of our higher goal scorers this season have left - McGeady and McNulty while our two central midfielders have scored one between them.

We would have to average 2 goals/game till the end of the season to catch up with the goal output under Keane's promotion season and we're currently averaging 1.36/game.
 
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Black Cat Gypsy said:
Saying you don't need a prolific striker is like saying you don't need a good keeper or a strong defense to win a league.

This is probably the weakest League One has been for a well. No one is running away with it, the points total is down this season and 85 points might be enough to win it. If we can get a striker won can get 1 in 3 between now and the end of the season our chances would improve greatly.
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Just because it it's the closest doesn't mean it's the weakest.
 
Smiler said:
It's all relative though, clubs at this level find prolific strikers at this level all the time. Score better than one in three and eventually you'll get a chance in the league above but lots fail, come back and end up prolific again
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Spot on. This is it, in a nutshell. The Peter Principle (promotion to level of incompetence) in action. It was ever thus.
 
The best team in the world hasn't got a prolific centre forward. But is still ridiculously important to them.


Wyke needs to be chipping in with a few more than he does mind.
 
ir35 said:
Without his goals they’d be well down the league.
Tbh the original post is once of the most nonsensical I’ve seen on here.
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If you take Toney's goals away, there are only three games (and one of those was a penalty - I was astonished it was this small) where his scoring / not scoring was the difference between winning and not winning. I was quite surprised at how little impact his 23 goals actually make to Peterborough's position. If you replace Toney with someone who has scored ten, they'd be in much the same position. It's not like Eric Cantona, where Man Utd won ten games 1-0, with him scoring them all.
 
Wyke does his best, but I can't think of a striker we have had play this number of games with less ability - suggestions?
I think PP hopes he can garner the interest of both centre halves thereby creating space for the players that can create and score goals.
Hope he scores a hatrick Saturday.
 

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